7 Re-engagement Email Examples to Win Back Inactive Subscribers [2025]

Having an active email list is key to successful email marketing. You want valid emails and subscribers who enjoy your content and turn into loyal customers.

But what happens when some stop engaging, It’s frustrating, right? Inactive subscribers hurt your email performance and ROI.

Email list decay costs you about 22.5% of your subscribers every year.

But don’t worry Re-engagement email campaigns can help you well. They’re a great way to reconnect, spark interest, and remind subscribers why they signed up.

In this guide, learn 7 creative strategies for re-engagement emails to bring them back to life.

So let’s get started,

What is a Re-engagement Email

Often when you are in business for a while, you find several leads that are no longer engaging with your emails. You send out your emails but these prospects do not open your emails.

There could be 3 possible reasons this can happen.

1. They do not find your emails interesting anymore.
2. For some reason, they are no longer willing to receive your emails.
3. They have marked your emails as spam.

A great way to handle this situation is to use re-engagement email campaigns.

Let’s say you’re an online course creator. You notice that some students haven’t logged in for weeks and haven’t interacted with your lessons. A re-engagement email can help.

Why is It Important to Send Re-engagement Emails

Sending re-engagement emails is essential for maintaining a healthy, effective email marketing strategy. Here’s why:

• Avoids Long-Term Damage: Ignoring inactive subscribers can hurt your email performance over time. Implementing a re-engagement strategy using humor, exclusive content, or an engaging win-back offer can prevent long-term damage.
• Maintains a Healthy Email List: Regularly cleaning your list ensures it’s full of engaged subscribers. It leads to better overall performance and higher email open rates.
• Protects Sender Reputation: Inactive email subscribers or outdated contacts can harm your sender’s reputation, affecting email deliverability. Use email verification tools to ensure your contact list is up-to-date.
• Combats Email List Decay: On average, you lose about 22.5% of your subscribers annually due to inactivity. A win-back email flow can help you reconnect with dormant subscribers and reduce this loss.
• Reconnects Subscribers: Re-engagement emails help you reconnect with unengaged subscribers who may have lost interest. It brings them back into your funnel and potentially turns them into new customers.
• Increases Opportunities for Conversion: Engaging inactive email recipients increases opportunities for conversion. Even cold leads can become loyal customers with personalized, relevant content delivered through advanced segmentation.
• Improves Email Metric: By targeting inactive or dormant subscribers, you can improve key metrics like open rates, clickthrough rates, and conversion rates, which helps optimize engagement email campaigns.

Tips for Writing Re-engagement Emails

Here are some tips for writing effective re-engagement emails for you:

• Personalize the Message: Use your subscriber’s name and mention their past interactions. A personal touch makes your message feel genuine and helps grab their attention.
• Make It Clear Why You’re Reaching Out: Be upfront and let them know why you’re emailing. Whether it’s a special deal, new features, or just saying “We miss you,” clarity builds trust.
• Highlight New Features or Offers: If you’ve added anything new, like products or features, share them. It’s a great way to get them excited again.
• Use Segmentation and Tags: Segment your list based on activity or interests. Using tags like “inactive” or “active contact” helps you send more relevant messages, making your emails feel more personal.
• Include a Strong Call-to-Action (CTA): Let them know exactly what to do next. Whether it’s visiting your site, completing a purchase, or checking out a new feature, make it easy for them to take action.
• Offer Exclusive Content or Discounts: Everyone loves a good deal. Offering discounts or exclusive content gives them a reason to come back.
• Create Urgency: Make it clear that they’re missing out by adding urgency. Phrases like “Limited Time Offer” or “Don’t Miss Out” encourage quick action.
• Keep It Simple and Friendly: Be direct and warm. A friendly, simple tone makes your message more relatable and easy to engage with.
• Test and Optimize: Test different subject lines, content, and timing to see what works best for your audience. This will allow you to keep improving your re-engagement emails.

With these tips, you can create re-engagement emails that grab attention and turn inactive subscribers into loyal, engaged customers.

7 Re-engagement Email Examples to Win Back Inactive Subscribers

There could be many ways to handle re-engagement campaigns. Following are 7 re-engagement email examples that you can consider using in your campaign.

1. “We Miss You” Email

A friendly, nostalgic, and personalized “We Miss You” email works incredibly well for re-engagement efforts.

Use a sincerely warm tone when reaching out to convey that you’ve genuinely missed connecting with the subscriber. Include their first name for personalization.

Remind inactive subscribers of who you are, the value your brand brings, and why they signed up in the first place. Remind them about product benefits or content offerings.

Then express your desire to pick up where you left off and reconnect with them again after noticing the inactivity gap.

Include some open-ended questions to spark conversation and give them an easy opening to respond.

Ultimately, the goal is to re-establish ongoing communication instead of a hard sale. You can even consider offering some sort of incentive as a “miss you” gift to make it extra appealing to re-engage.

2. Offer Exclusive Coupon Offers on Next Purchase

Special coupon codes, percentage discounts, or store credits are great ways to grab the attention of prospects.

And they work pretty well in a re-engagement email. You can offer such incentives to persuade leads to become active again.

Add additional details of the overall value they can get for continuous engagement such as sharing a lucrative rewards or loyalty program, current promotional offers, etc.

The idea is to make them realize that re-engaging with your emails is valuable and beneficial for more than just information or promotions.

This will often convince people to start communicating with your brand again.

3. Personalized Recommendations Reminders

You can use the data of your subscribers’ or customers’ previous interactions with your brand to provide tailored recommendations or reminders.

These emails are highly effective for reconnecting with inactive users by reminding them of products or services they previously showed interest in.

Use this strategy when users have shown a history of engagement but have become inactive lately.

By offering personalized recommendations or reminding them about products they viewed or left in their cart, you aim to reignite their interest and prompt them to take action.

You can also consider reminding them about items they regularly ordered or browsed in the past, while they were active, along with a special offer.

By personalizing recommendations and reminding them of their previous interests, you’re providing a tailored experience that encourages re-engagement and prompts them to take the next step with your brand.

4. Limited-time Offers or Flash Sales

You can consider running a limited-time offer or a flash sale and use this opportunity to send a persuasive re-engagement email to inactive users.

In the email copy, add a sense of urgency by highlighting the limited time available to claim the discount.

To execute this approach, craft an attention-grabbing subject line like “Last Chance: Exclusive 24-Hour Flash Sale Inside!”

Communicate the urgency and exclusivity of the offer in the email body. It emphasizs the limited time available for them to take advantage of the deal.

This approach will create a sense of FOMO and compel recipients to act swiftly, thereby driving re-engagement and motivating them to purchase within the limited timeframe.

5. Interactive Feedback Surveys

You can leverage the concept of “inclusivity” to try and make prospects connect with your brand again.

To do so, you can craft interactive surveys or quizzes to encourage inactive subscribers or customers to provide feedback.

Compile an email to convey that you are seeking to understand the reasons behind disengagement and gather valuable insights to improve your products, services, or communication strategies.

This approach will make the prospect feel like you truly care about them. They will feel like they are part of your business journey and you truly want to reconcile the relationship.

Some of the inactive leads will consider giving you feedback and will be eager to wait to see if you truly mean what you wrote in the email.

After that, you need to make prompt responses to their feedback and give them your plan on how you wish to improve.

If they notice your proactive actions, they will now have even more trust than they had before they became inactive.

Overall, this tactic builds a great emotional connection between your brand and the inactive customers, leading to a fruitful re-engagement.

6. Sharing Recent Stories of Successful Customers

Testimonials and social proofs are a great way to gain trust and credibility.

If you think people are disengaging with your emails due to having doubts about the benefits you promise, then sharing success stories of your customers can be a great topic for a re-engagement email.

You can craft a persuasive email to highlight the success stories or testimonials from satisfied customers.

This tactic of showcasing real-life experiences and demonstrating the value and benefits of your products or services will help to make many people consider engaging with your brand again.

This approach can even lead some of the inactive leads to convert into clients. Overall, this is a great way to leverage social proof to get marketing benefits.

7. Email Series to Warn Removal From The List

Suppose you have tried many tactics to try and ignite a re-engagement with your inactive subscribers but nothing worked.

In this case, you can go for the final re-engagement email series – a last warning before removing them from your email lists.

• Here, you can start the process 1 month before the actual removal by sending a “Warning! Your Subscription Maybe Removed!” email along with the date when you plan on actually removing them from your lists. Also, give a clear message on how to stop the removal process.
• Next, send a 2nd email 1-week before the removal with a “You still have a chance to continue receiving our emails..” message where you share the value they will miss if unsubscribed and the way to stop the removal.
• Finally, send a 3rd email 12 hours before the removal with a “Last chance to stay subscribed!” email with a final warning.
• Then, go ahead and actually remove their email and send a confirmation email to let them know that they will no longer receive emails from you, but still give instructions on how they can re-subscribe if they want to in the future.

During this whole process, many will think about the situation and consider re-engaging.

Reliable Tools to Craft and Send Re-engagement Emails

To send out re-engagement emails, you will need to use an email marketing tool that allows you to track customer engagement analytics, and segment them based on inactivity, ensuring your email marketing campaigns are optimized for better response rates.

Plus, you should be able to customize your emails with full control and set up email automation for inactivity. The following are a few tools that you will love to use to plan re-engagement email campaigns.

1. Mail Mint

Mail Mint is an email marketing automation tool built for WordPress and WooCommerce.

The plugin is designed to help you optimize your email marketing efforts through unlimited lead collection, easy lead management, fully customized email campaigns and sequences, lead segmentation, visual automation workflows, and many more.

The plugin comes with detailed analytics on your leads along with several automation triggers to easily craft meaningful email series for your prospects.

2. MailerLite

MailerLite is an email marketing software platform designed to assist businesses in creating, managing, and automating their email marketing campaigns.

With this tool, you will get various features such as drag-and-drop editors, pre-designed templates, segmentation options, and analytics to track email performance

It’s a great tool to prepare re-engagement emails for e-commerce businesses.

3. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a comprehensive and versatile email marketing automation platform that offers a wide array of features such as email marketing capabilities, marketing automation, and sales automation tools all within a single platform.

You will easily be able to trigger automation flows for various user actions and run email campaigns with personalized data.

4. Klaviyo

Klaviyo is an advanced email marketing platform primarily designed for e-commerce businesses.

It specializes in helping online retailers create highly targeted and personalized email marketing campaigns based on customer behavior and data insights.

It’s a great tool for preparing re-engagement emails that involve using customer behavioral data.

Conclusion

Re-engaging inactive subscribers doesn’t have to be complicated — sometimes, a simple, thoughtful message is all it takes.

With these 7 re-engagement email examples, you have everything you need to reconnect with your audience and remind them why they signed up in the first place.

Whether it’s a heartfelt “We miss you” email or an exclusive offer, the key is to keep it personal and relevant. Start applying these strategies today to turn inactive subscribers into loyal & engaged ones.

For an easier and more effective approach, try using Mail Mint to design and automate your re-engagement campaigns.

** FAQs **

How Many Emails Are in a Re-engagement Campaign?

• A re-engagement email campaign usually includes 3-5 emails. You can start with a gentle “We miss you” email, highlight new features or exclusive offers, and guide subscribers through clear next steps. It’s all about re-sparking subscribers’ interest and bringing them back into your engaged audience.

How Do I Reengage a Dead Email List?

• Re-engaging a dead email list starts with a simple message. Send a win-back flow with personalized content, like updates on your new features or a special offer. Use tags like “inactive” or “active contact” to segment your list for tailored messages.

How Do You Explain Customer Engagement?

• Customer engagement is about how you connect with your audience through meaningful interactions, like emails, SMS, or even subscriber interactions on your site. Your primary goal is to build trust and keep your target subscribers interested, leading to increased customer loyalty.

What’s the Best Time to Send Re-engagement Emails?

• Timing is key, Send emails when your target subscribers are most active (mid-morning or early evening) often works well. Tools like Mail Mint often time their messages strategically to catch potential customers when they’re ready to engage.

How Can I Make My Re-engagement Campaign More Effective?

• Focus on your subscribers’ interests. Use advanced segmentation, like inactive tags or contact tags, to send relevant content. Include clear next steps and a CTA to guide them back, whether it’s an email, SMS, or other engagement email campaign.